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Today, the administration of US President Barack Obama announced a blueprint for a “Privacy Bill of Rights.”

The goal: “improve consumers’ privacy protections” and “give users more control over how their personal information is used on the Internet”, all the while maintaining the internet’s status as an “engine for innovation and economic growth.”

To achieve that goal, the president has enlisted the help of some of the internet’s biggest names, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL.

When agents of the United States federal government began an international operation to raid MegaUpload, they were targeting after an organization that was allegedly engaged in a highly-illegal and highly-profitable piracy business.

But their actions have had a ripple effect across the internet, with other ‘file locker’ and ‘file sharing’ services questioning their own futures.

Parts of the internet will go black tomorrow. From Wikipedia and Reddit to the Cheezburger network and Major League Gaming, numerous highly-trafficked web properties say they’ll shut down to protest the SOPA legislation that would make the internet far less free in the name of fighting piracy.

The fight against SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, may be one of the most important fights ever waged on the internet. It threatens to change the course of the web’s development, and not for the better.

Given the impact this dark and misguided legislation would have on the internet economy, it’s no surprise that many are coming together to do what they can to ensure it doesn’t become law.

The media is starting to pay attention, and SOPA supporters like GoDaddy are seeing that such support comes at a cost. These things provide some hope that SOPA will be defeated.

Over the past month, battle lines have been drawn over a proposed new law in the US called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

If passed, it will strengthen the American Justice Department’s power to go after websites that host disputed copyright material and could make sites such as YouTube, Tumblr, and Reddit liable for violations.